Covid Outbreak in Southern China Leads to Shipping Crisis

Business and consumers face a Shipping crisis the Covid 19 outbreak in southern China disrupts port services and delays deliveries in costs again. There was a critical shortage of containers due to the pandemic. Then came a massive blockage in the Suez Canal.The Chinese province of Guangdong has faced a sudden uptick in Covid-19 cases. Authorities have moved to shut down districts and businesses to prevent the virus from spreading rapidly.

According to analysts and those in the Shipping industry, that’s causing massive Shipping delays in major Chinese ports, and jacking up already-high  costs as waiting times at berths skyrocketed.Brian Glick, founder and CEO at supply chain integration platform Chain.io, said that the disruptions in Shenzhen and Guangzhou are massive. Alone, they would have an unprecedented supply chain impact. However, combined with the challenges that the global supply chain has faced since this year, is in uncharted waters.

According to the World Shipping Council,Guangdong, a major Shipping hub, accounts for about 24% of China’s total exports. It is also home to the Shenzhen port and the Guangzhou port which are the third largest and the fifth largest in the world by container volume.The first local case of the Delta variant, first detected in India, was found in Guangzhou in May and has since spiked to over 100 cases. Authorities have imposed lockdowns and other measures that constrain the processing capacity at ports.

Then one of the largest container ships in the world, the Ever Given, got stuck in the Suez Canal and blocked the key trading route for nearly a week. Nearly 12% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, where more than 50 ships a day on average pass through. The incident spurred a global Shipping crisis and held up $9 billion in international trade a day.